


Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be

by Piker_Benunder



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Comedy, Demons, Don't worry it's light-hearted I promise, Gen, Hell, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 18:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20440853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piker_Benunder/pseuds/Piker_Benunder
Summary: One week ago, Urkoth realised that living in Hell was a bummer. Millennia of applying torture, receiving torture, and attending overly long meetings about torture led him to this conclusion. As a result, he made a spontaneous, daring escape to Earth, a place he imagined to be considerably more pleasant than Hell. Not just for humans, but perhaps for a demon as well.That wasn’t the case.Quite the opposite, in fact.





	Hell Ain't a Bad Place to Be

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the following writing prompt: You are a demon that’s escaped from Hell only to find that the Earth is ten times worse than what you ran from. And now Hell won’t let you back in...

One week ago, Urkoth realised that living in Hell was a bummer. Millennia of applying torture, receiving torture, and attending overly long meetings about torture led him to this conclusion. As a result, he made a spontaneous, daring escape to Earth, a place he imagined to be considerably more pleasant than Hell. Not just for humans, but perhaps for a demon as well.

That wasn’t the case.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

So it came that Urkoth found his way back to the only direct passage between Earth and Hell, a plain door in a back alley somewhere in New Cross, London. Rain-soaked, he knocked on the door. A quiet click indicated someone on the other side looking through the spyhole. A few seconds later, the door opened.

“You have the nerve to show your face here?” the gatekeeper growled.

Urkoth raised his clawed hands apologetically. “I know, and I’m sorry. Made a terrible mistake. Tell you what, though. How about we forget about this whole thing and you let me back in.”

“No.” The gatekeeper showed remarkable restraint. Had he raised his voice to the degree he actually wanted, and used the fitting vocabulary, most smaller living creatures in a four mile radius would have exploded violently and any human would have gone insane as a reaction to a cacophony of sounds too unbearable for mortal minds.

“I get, you’re mad. I shouldn’t have tricked you, and I shouldn’t have even come up with a plan to leave Hell, let alone dare wanting such a forbidden thing. But here we are.” Any self-respecting demon didn’t possess the ability to beg. It’s a skill one quickly disregards when tortured on a regular basis with no hope of it ever stopping. Best to just roll with it. This time, however, was a desperate one, and called for desperate measures. Especially since the gatekeeper obviously had no intentions of playing nice. “So please. Please! I beg of you, get me out of here!”

The passage between Earth and Hell was only used by the Devil, and even those were rare occasions. Being a gatekeeper was abysmally boring. Apart from stopping the rare demon trying to break free and opening the door for the Devil, there was naught to do. Still, he was the demon closest to the realm of mortals, and yet even he didn’t know a single thing about what life on Earth was really like, other than a few blurbs humans sometimes shouted before their wills were broken and shattered. In front of him was a demon who had been to the other side, with direct knowledge. How curious and tempting. “No. But… tell me about Earth. Humans.”

“Oh, you don’t want to know. You really, really don’t.” Gently squeezing past the gatekeeper didn’t work. “It’s horrible, okay? Much worse than I had anticipated. It’s… everything. The smell is horrible. You get used to the sulphur and noxious gases down below, but these places they call public bathrooms are on another level, and they are just everywhere. And they eat insects and spiders voluntarily. So that’s three months of R&D down the drain.” Urkoth pointed upwards. “Rain? Sure, that’s not too bad. Mildly uncomfortable, maybe. But there are these vile creatures humans call dogs, they are similar to a cerberus, only smaller and more disgusting. Anyway, they stink when they are wet. And humans adore them!”

“That’s insane.”

“It is, it truly is. And that’s the worst part. Believe me, humans are terrible, but being among them showed me how utterly pointless we are. We can pack it up, Hell is a joke.”

The gatekeeper gasped in astonishment. “What? That can’t be true.”

“A human’s existence is constant torture. How can you love something that smells so bad when they get wet, that not only shits in their homes but eats it and then throws up and eats that. Yeah, I know. Insane, you said it already. Don’t even get me started on cheese.” Urkoth valiantly defeated the urge to violently dry heave. “But all that, and all the countless other crap that I can’t in good conscience tell you about, pale in comparison to two things. First, and I’ll keep it briefly, is their nastiness. So much of what we work so hard on to make super awful and torturous, they just do for fun. Candle wax? Go ahead, pour it on these nipples of mine. Various objects up the nether regions? The more the merrier. Just yesterday, I walked into a shop where they sold whips and chains. Whips and chains!”

“But they’re our mainstay.” The gatekeeper couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Here comes the kicker. You can’t see it from here, but all the way up there is the sun. The very thing that allows life to flourish. And,” Urkoth had to stop himself, because he was starting to laugh in utter shock and disbelief. After clearing his throat, he continued, “And it gives them cancer.”

“No! Are you serious?”

“I am. There’s something in the sunlight that causes cancer. So simple, yet so brilliant. On top of all that, in the near future, the sun will also boil them all alive, basically. Why? Because of their technological vanity, hubris and greed. It’s all so perfect.” He sighed deeply. “We aren’t needed. What can we do they aren’t already doing to themselves? We’re redundant.”

The gatekeeper thought about what he had been told. The implications.

“So, I’m sure you understand why I’m here. Please let me in.”

“All I ever do is stand here and wait,” the gatekeeper started. “Stopping you peasants from getting through is satisfying for me and usually horrible for you. But it’s not torture, is it? No, I don’t think it is. I’ve always envied you other guys, I truly did. Enforcing your horrifying ideas upon some poor souls. I never had the opportunity to do that. Until now.” And with those words, the gatekeeper slammed the door in Urkoth’s unsuspecting face.


End file.
